Our Children’s Lives: a villanelle

Adventure here finds peril where great mystery still thrives;
it won’t respond to reason or attempts to understand
the me-o-centric universe that is our children’s lives.

A place where having grown ourselves, we’ve proved we can survive,
although what proof we have is often just in theory; and
adventure here finds peril where great mystery still thrives.

A mad morass of clique and class, peer pressure and sex drive,
that we have with experience found the strength to withstand:
the me-o-centric universe that is our children’s lives.

They simply want more everything, and each day are deprived;
and nothing is deemed good enough or goes the way it’s planned.
Adventure here finds peril where great mystery still thrives.

The constant webs they weave, and the perspectives they contrive
are foreign now, though once we were their age, and knew firsthand
the me-o-centric universe that is our children’s lives.

Successful navigation of this world is one in five;
and those who last intact are held in awe and great demand.
Adventure here finds peril where great mystery still thrives:
the me-o-centric universe that is our children’s lives.